


marks on walls

by melonbug



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, Delusions, Disordered Eating, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Illness, Paranoia, Rough Sex, Sexual Content, brief references of self harm, brief references to suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbug/pseuds/melonbug
Summary: Keith is sick. Lance doesn't realize it until it's too late.





	marks on walls

**Author's Note:**

> So I don't want to tag the mental illness that's discussed here, because I don't want to lessen the impact of it in the story. However, I'm going to put it in the end notes if you need the warning.
> 
> I've done extensive, extensive research on the mental illness described in this fic, and I worked very hard to make this as realistic and as sensitive to the illness itself as possible.

Lance was still in the midst of post battle haze, his limbs heavy and his eyes itchy, when he stumbled across his room to answer the incessant knocking at his door. It slid open to reveal Keith and he was as much a sight for sore eyes as Lance knew he himself was. Keith regarded him with a wide eyed, manic look and Lance took an awkward step back.

“Listen, Keith,” Lance said, “I’m sorry about earlier, I was just being an ass and I shouldn’t have-” He trailed off because Keith had stepped in and the door had closed behind him. Now he leaned back against it, looking unsteady on his feet. He was out of his armor at least, which was more than Lance could say about himself. He was still in the undersuit, having given up halfway through taking it off in favor of sitting on his bed and simply exhaling slowly, swallowing down rattled nerves.

They all knew the price of what they did and the war they were fighting. It never got easier and they cracked more around the edges with every fight.

“Keith?” Lance tried again and the paladin’s eyes found his. They were red ringed with fatigue.

Keith managed a short wave of his hand. “It’s fine,” he said. “Earlier, I mean. I started it anyway.”

He had. He’d made a snide remark about Lance’s piloting as they'd stumbled from the hangar, all of them wired and in absolutely  _ no mood _ for that sort of thing. Lance had reacted accordingly.

Shiro had looked disappointed as usual.

“Anyway,” Keith continued, thrumming his fingers against the door. “ _ Anyway _ , I, uhhh-” He swallowed visibly, his adam’s apple bobbing with it. He looked away from Lance and directed his gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said what I said. You’re a good pilot, Lance.”

“Oh,” Lance stuttered out, face heating up. “Thanks, I guess?” He wracked his brain, trying to remember a single instance in which Keith Kogane had ever complimented his piloting. He came up blank, and he had a fairly good memory. “Is that why you’re here?”

If Keith thought for a moment that his staunch attempt at averting his gaze was subtle then he was seriously wrong. “I, uhh, not really, no.” Lance opened his mouth to pry more out of him, because he was being surprisingly awkward, at least for him. Keith beat him to it. “I just didn’t want to be alone, was all.”

Oh.

Lance could understand that. There was too little to do on the ship and too much time to spread it out over. It was dreary and boring and drove Lance, especially, to the brink of manic episodes through the sheer lack of ability to expend the pent up energy he so often had.

“Yeah, okay. I’m fine with that, if you want to hang out in here.” Lance took a step back with the intent of heading towards his bed, where he had been sitting before the knock at the door, but he stopped short. Keith had slid slowly down until he was sitting on the floor and he drew his knees to his chest.

Well shit.

Lance stumbled over and joined him, situating himself close enough against him that their arms brushed. Keith was warm in the way that his Lion was. “Are you going to be okay?” Lance whispered and Keith rolled his head to the side to look at him. It put their faces close together and Lance flushed red at the proximity.

“I don’t know,” Keith said at last. “Are any of us really okay?” His eyes answered that question, a reflection of Lance’s own: heavy with bags and narrowed from fatigue, with restless blinks. They didn’t burn with life the way eyes should, but instead smoldered, energy burning slowly out of them. It was harrowing. They all carried that look.

“I’m here,” Lance murmured and Keith sighed.

“I know,” Keith said. “Besides, your room was closest.” He grinned, then, and Lance managed to crack his own smile. None of the pain melted away, but it helped. What did melt away was the awkwardness of their proximity, their mingled breath in the space between them, barely inches, now.

It was Keith that closed the distance, pressing his lips to Lance’s own and Lance sucked in a sharp breath through his nose, returning it, shifting closer to him. Keith kissed like fire, like all the life wasn’t bleeding so slowly out of his eyes like it was through Lance’s. There was only so much that could be done to pretend things were normal and right and that the lives they led weren’t collectively destroying them.

This was one of those things: Keith on his lap, straddling his thighs, rocking against him, Lance’s fingers tangled in his hair as they kissed. Their hearts, pounding hard in their chests.

They fucked on the floor, Lance’s knees biting painfully into the cool floor as he pressed Keith against the door, undoing him. After, they lay on the ground, chests heaving, their backs sticky with sweat where they pressed against the chilly metal beneath him, raising goosebumps across their skin.

Keith was quiet, where Lance was still catching his breath, coming down from the adrenaline rush. The sound of his heavy breathing was the only sound to fill the room. “I think there’s something wrong with me,” Keith murmured suddenly. He lifted an arm into the air, reaching out as if he could snatch at the ceiling and bring it down onto them both.

Lance let his head fall so that he was looking at Keith. Keith was looking at the ceiling like he found life they were missing hidden somewhere between the cracks in the paneling.

“Keith?” Lance started, worried. Keith gave a slight shake to his head, which was enough to quiet Lance.

“Sometimes,” Keith continued, flexing his fingers, curling them as if he’d found something there to catch. “Sometimes I can hear the voices of the people we couldn’t save.” he brought his arm down and pressed the back of his knuckles to his mouth, hand trembling, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

Lance swallowed bile, following Keith’s gaze. There was nothing there but Keith looked up so intently as if there  _ was _ something to see. Lance squeezed his hand where it was still in his, twining their fingers together. “I understand,” he whispered. They all did. Sometimes they were too late. Sometimes they arrived on a planet to find smoldering bodies and ruin. “We all understand.”

He let out a laugh, hiding a wrecked sob beneath it. “We’re all alone, in the end.” They were. They went their separate ways, to cope as they each needed it. Maybe it wasn’t healthy, but maybe that was how they all best coped: as individuals. Trauma was unique to each and every one of them. “I’m here,” Lance said at last.

“I know,” Keith murmured.

  
  


Meals were no longer the shared affairs they used to be, at the very, very beginning when they were young and excited and they thought that what they were doing made a difference. Now Lance was lucky if he went less than several days without seeing one of the other paladins. They did make time, though, where the could. Allura insisted.

Lance was sat now at the table with everyone else, the room painfully silent. They’d just returned from another successful mission, but success only meant that they defeated the Galra. Success didn’t mean it went well, or that it was easy, or that they weren’t currently still reeling from it, sat around a table with food they couldn’t stomach.

Shiro spoke first, dragging them all into a light hearted conversation, encouraging Pidge to launch into an explanation of her latest project. Lance knew she didn’t sleep much anymore, and the rush of sluggish words that left her didn’t refute that.

It helped. Hunk and Lance chimed in and soon they were discussing the particulars of the Lions, suggesting new strategies and upgrades.

“Are you okay, Keith?” Shiro cut in suddenly, and it startled Lance because he had fallen into talking with Hunk, reminiscing over the foods they missed the most.

Lance looked at Keith now, and Keith was staring off into space, spoon in his hand but resting in his untouched food. Lance wasn’t certain how long he had been spaced out for, but Shiro’s expression told him enough. Carefully Lance reached a leg out and kicked him.

It yanked him from whatever it was and he flinched, wide eyes darting back and forth before finally landing on Lance.

“Are you okay, Keith?” Shiro asked again and Keith jerked his eyes away from Lance to look at him.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, pushing his bowl away. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He stood and stepped out and none of them followed, though Lance was sure they all wanted to. That was where they were: quiet acceptance when one of them didn't want to talk about it. Sometimes they needed time and space. Keith maybe more than others.

 

He was quiet, when Lance saw him. Every shared meal, as sporadic as they were, was spent with him staring down at his green goop in silence, sometimes barely eating it.

He was loud, though, when he came to Lance and Lance pressed him into the mattress, fingers burning bruises into his hips.

“I want you to hurt me,” Keith murmured into a fiery kiss and so Lance did, pinned him down and twisted his arms behind his back, grip hard around his wrists where he held them there. Keith  _ keened _ .

They all had their own ways of coping. This was how they coped together.

 

Lance found him in the hallway, once, sitting on the ground outside of the training room. Lance knew he had just been in there by the way he clenched his knuckles, the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Watcha doing?” Lance asked, looking down at him. Keith tilted his head back to return the look and he looked wrecked. His eyes were red and his face looked gaunt and pale.

“I’m listening,” he whispered, as if speaking too loudly might drown out what, exactly, he was listening to. Lance frowned, alarmed, and looked down the hallway to where Keith had been looking when he walked over. It was appallingly silent all around them, except the ragged sound of Keith’s breathing.

Lance hesitated but then dropped down next to him, catching his hand.

“I’m here,” he said.

“I know,” Keith echoed into the silence. They sat together, backs to the cool wall, and they listened to the silence. It screamed at them and Keith shook.

 

Lance was rougher, now, the way Keith liked it, enjoying the mewling noises he made when Lance had him on his knees, one hand buried and pulling hard at his stupid mullet.

 

“You’re looking thin,” Lance noted, throwing an arm around Keith. He was pale as he always was but his face was ashen and gaunt. His hipbones jutted awkwardly, and Lance had noticed it earlier, but he had been preoccupied then. Now, though, all of it was noticeable: the slight hint of ribs, the sharp collarbone, the way his hands shook.

“Mmm,” Keith mumbled out, shifting and settling himself against Lance. “I can’t eat.”

Lance understood that. He had plenty of days where the thought of eating made him ill. The food was gross and he closed his eyes and saw blood often enough that it soured what little appetite he had.

“Still,” Lance said, nosing at his neck. Keith’s hair tickled his his face and it lifted his spirits a bit. “You should try to eat anyway.”

“Okay,” Keith answered.

 

It was noticeable, after, how often Keith either didn’t join them for the few shared meals they had or walked out without touching his food. Every time was stranger, his spacing out more obvious whenever one of them had to practically shake him out of it. He flinched, a lot.

 

Lance caught a bony elbow as Keith passed him in the hallway. They were on their way to the Lions, the hallway filled with the unnerving dim red of an alarm. It cast Keith’s face into awkward shadows. He looked like a ghoul, dragged up from hell. “You need to talk to someone,” Lance hissed out, his other hand snapping his armor in place.

“I’m  _ fine _ .” He yanked his arm away and fumbled with his own armor, stumbling a few steps. Lance let it go, because they didn’t really have the time. There were other things to be doing.

 

“It doesn’t have to be me,” Lance said. “But someone, Keith. It needs to be  _ someone _ .

 

Keith walked out on two more meals, green goo untouched, before Lance finally followed after him. He found him in his bathroom, hunched over the toilet, heaving up what little green goo he had managed to put down.

He looked up at Lance as he stepped in, eyes wide with terror, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. Lance didn’t say anything, just helped him stand and slipped a glass of water into his hands. They shook as he took it, enough so that the water splashed out of the edges.

“The food,” he explained at last, curled up on the bed, head in Lance’s lap. “The food is making me  _ sick _ .”

Lance nodded and ran a hand through his damp hair, biting his own lip. “We can make different food. Hunk keeps talking about collecting produce from the planets we visit, figuring them out.” Keith’s eyes were closed and he breathed slowly, in that distinctive way that told Lance he was almost asleep.

He didn’t respond.

 

If there was a tipping point, it had long passed without Lance noticing. It all slid downhill from there. Lance found excuses to be around him, just to watch him as much as to not be alone.

 

“Listen,” Lance said, combing his hand through Keith’s hair. “Talk to someone.”

“I have been,” he whispered.

Lance snorted. “I don’t count, Keith,” he told him. Keith didn’t respond. It was Shiro, Lance decided. He was probably talking to Shiro. Maybe it helped.

It didn’t look like it was helping, though.

 

Lance found him whispering to himself, leaning against the door to his room. He stopped before Lance was close enough to make out what he was saying but his eyes, when they found his, were wild. “Who are you talking to?” Lance asked softly.

Keith met his eyes and Lance sucked in a sharp breath, startled at the look he found there. “The people on the ship,” he whispered at last, voice hoarse. There was nothing on his face though, his expression slack and blank save for the terror in his eyes.

He’d started eating again and Lance had felt his worry slip away, little by little. Now it returned tenfold and he furrowed his eyebrows. He reached for Keith and, rather than jerking away as expected, his fellow paladin allowed the touch.

“Lance,” he said suddenly. Lance curled a hand gently around his wrist, pressing his thumb into his pulse. Keith met his eyes. “I think there’s something making me sick.”

Lance frowned and let go of him. “You said it was the food,” he murmured cautiously.

Keith shook his head. “No, no I think it’s—” His eyes darted past Lance and down the empty stretch of hallway. “I think it’s something else, maybe?”

Lance sucked in a breath. “Listen, Keith. There’s no one else on the ship but us.”

Keith grinned. “Of course,” he said. “I  _ know  _ that.”

Lance didn’t believe it anymore. He wasn’t certain if he believed  _ anything _ Keith said anymore. Only, that wasn’t quite true— “Keith, you said you’re sick.”

Keith made a noise of assent, pressing himself back against his door, letting his head fall back against it and his eyes flutter closed. “Yes.”  
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay, I believe you.” He considered reaching out to touch him again but something told him he should start putting distance between them. He was embroiled, he hadn’t _noticed_. “We should—Keith, we should go to the others, maybe get you into a healing pod so we can figure this out.”

It got a reaction from Keith and he lurched forward, angry. Lance took another uncertain step back. “ _ No _ ,” he snapped. “No.”

“Keith—”

“No, Lance. You don’t understand! There’s something  _ making  _ me sick. Something on this ship, it’s on this ship, I know it.”

Lance reached for him again and it was a mistake. Keith drew away as if struck.

“Fuck you, Lance,” he hissed out. He palmed at the door behind him and it slid open. “I thought you understood, I thought you were  _ on my side _ .”

“What, Keith, I don’t—”

The door closed in his face.

 

He should have gone to the others right away but he didn’t. And when Keith came to his room later, apologies spilling from his lips, Lance was too weak to say no to him and his begging eyes.

And he didn’t go to the others because just like that Keith was fine again. He was  _ Keith _ and now Lance was the one doubting himself and what he had seen. Keith kissed him softly and Lance thought,  _ maybe I was reading into it too much _ . Maybe Keith really was fine.

He'd said he was fine and maybe he was owed the benefit of the doubt at the very least. 

 

Instead, the others ended up coming to him. Lance looked up at the sound of a knock at his door, jolted from what he was convincing himself was a nap but was really just listless staring at the ceiling above his bed. 

He'd expected Keith, because it was always Keith, but it was Shiro that stepped in. He looked tired in a way Lance could more than sympathize with. 

Lance pushed himself upright and tried his best to greet him with a smile. It fell flat. “What’d you need?” he asked. “Did I miss training or—” They didn’t train much as a team anymore, outside of exercises in the Lions.

Shiro hesitated, chewed at his lip for only a moment before finally speaking. “What’s going on with Keith?”

Lance averted his gaze. His heart was suddenly beating too fast and he drew in an anxious breath. “I—I don’t really know,” he admitted. But it was an admission that he knew  _ something _ .

Shiro stepped over and Lance braved looking at him. He didn’t look remotely upset, only resigned and concerned. Worry. He was worried. And Lance was worried, too, but every time he thought it was time to say something to someone, Keith was suddenly fine.

He was fine in the lions, when they formed Voltron. He was mostly fine when he was summoned to the bridge for meetings. He was fine so much of the time until he wasn’t.

“I mean—Yeah, he’s been acting strange,” Lance continued.

“Lance, I need you to be honest with me.”

Lance nodded, numb.

“Do you think Keith is a danger to himself?”

Lance’s stomach dropped and he felt ill. No, it had never struck him that Keith was—Maybe it should have, maybe— “No,” Lance breathed. “No, I mean—I’ve not really had that vibe or—” Lance took a deep breath. This was it. This was his fuckup.

“I just found him at one of the airlocks.”

Lance pressed a hand to his mouth. “Was he—Was he going to—?”

Shiro shook his head. “I don’t know.”

 

“I think Shiro’s worried about me.” Keith said it as if it were something of a surprise to him.

Lance choked on a mouthful of green goo and looked Keith’s way. It was just the two of them in the mess. Lance had realized just the week before that Keith ate if he was around, so he’d taken to eating with him. Keith was putting on weight, at any rate.

Keith nodded, stirring at his food. “Yeah, he pulled me aside the other day.”

Something like relief flooded through Lance. “He said he found you at the airlock,” Lance tried. Shiro had told him they’d talked and that had been the end of that.

Keith nodded. “Space is big.”

Lance frowned. “What?”

“I knew Shiro wouldn’t understand.”

Lance stared at him, anxious. Keith was looking somewhere else and he didn’t sound at all as if he were speaking to Lance.

“He’s making me think I’m not fine, but I  _ am _ fine.”

Keith darted his eyes to him and Lance took a deep breath.

“Lance, I’m fine.”

“Keith, you said you’re sick.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Keith, you told me—”

“No!”

Keith stood, his chair dragging loudly on the floor. Lance stood as well, heart beating in what he realized was growing terror.

“I’m not sick,” Keith spat. “Stop making me think I am, Lance.  _ Stop _ .”

Lance watched him leave. No, he decided. Keith was sick. Keith was very, very sick and Lance hadn’t done shit about it.

 

“I think it’s time to talk about Keith,” Lance finally said at dinner a few days later. Keith was absent, of course.

Shiro met his eyes before anyone else and something unspoken passed between them. Lance had only seen Keith once since his outburst the night before and they’d not exchanged a word, but it had been enough to tell him he needed to say something.

Pidge frowned and looked his way. “You know, I haven’t really seen him much.”

“He’s eating again,” Hunk said softly. So Hunk had noticed, at least.

“He’s sick,” Lance told them.

They all looked between each other, too much silence falling over the room. No one wanted to say anything. No one wanted to speculate.

“Like, physically?” Pidge asked at last. Her voice sounded tiny.

Lance shook his head about the same time Shiro did.

“He’s been talking to himself,” Lance continued. He shifted uncomfortably under everyone’s gaze. “I think he might be hearing things. And he’s been saying things that don’t make sense and he’s—” Lance ground to a halt. Shiro was staring at him, eyes hard. “What did he say to you?” Lance asked him. “Last week, when you—”

Pidge looked confused and Hunk looked especially confused.

Shiro cleared his throat. “I hadn’t told anyone yet,” he said softly.

“What?” It was Pidge, looking between them. “What happened?”

Lance glared at him. “He found Keith trying to kill himself.”

“What? What the hell, why—” Hunk and Pidge both tripped over themselves trying to speak.

“He wasn’t,” Shiro cut in. “He said he wasn’t.”

“And you believed him?” Pidge was shrill, Hunk fell somewhere between anxious and horrified.

Lance tuned it out, heart thumping loud. It wasn’t what he was trying to do. He’d thought they had all noticed, and maybe the ensuing fight was because they all had, but each felt guilty in turn over not saying anything.

Lance felt guilty. He felt so guilty he thought he might vomit.

“Lance?” He yanked his eyes up from where they had settled on his food. Shiro was looking at him, face pinched. “We need to get him into a healing pod.”

Lance nodded weakly.

“In theory, it should be able to scan—I don’t know, his brain, I guess?” Pidge’s voice was shaky. “We can get a diagnoses, figure out what’s going on.”

“Yeah,” Lance croaked out. “Yeah, I think. I think maybe he’ll listen to me? I can try and get him there.”

 

He knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into Keith’s room. Keith sat on the bed, eyes on his lap, and something was very, very wrong. Lance stepped in and let the door close behind him.

“Keith?” He didn’t have much of a plan but he was always one for winging it. “Keith?”

Keith looked up at him and smiled and Lance’s stomach dropped. Lance took a nervous step forward and Keith stood, stumbling over to him. It wasn’t until Keith was almost right in front of him that Lance realized he had a dagger in his hand.

“Fuck. Fuck, Keith—” Lance raised his arms and stepped back. “Keith, put down the knife, please.”

Keith brandished it, angry. “I know it’s you, Lance,” he said.

“Keith, please, listen to me, it’s not—”

“ _ Shut up _ , Lance.” Lance snapped his mouth closed. “I know. _ I know _ . You’re the one making me sick. It’s  _ you _ .”

Lance took a deep breath and stepped forward. He didn’t know if it was a good sign or not that Keith stepped away from him when he did. He still had the knife in front of him though, face twisted into anger.

“Keith. I’m sorry I said you were sick, okay?”

Keith’s hand shook around the hilt of the blade. “Don’t,” he whispered. “I  _ am  _ sick, Lance. But it’s only because of  _ you _ . You’re putting these…these…these  _ thoughts _ in my head. You’re making me think I’m sick, and I’m  _ not _ .”

“That’s not what I’m doing, Keith, I promise. I just want to help, we all just want to—”

Keith didn’t wait for him to finish. He lunged forward and Lance was only barely able to avoid the knife. But Keith was always the better fighter; He caught Lance on the upswing and he threw up an arm to block the knife, back slamming hard into the door.

He was vaguely aware of pain and the copper smell of blood as the knife sliced through him. The adrenaline overrode all of it, and he pushed back, catching Keith off guard and sending them both crashing to the floor. From there it was a hard tangle of limbs, Lance scrabbling frantically for the knife, Keith screaming and shouting incoherently. It became a mad fight for it, Keith still strong despite how wiry his frame was. He slammed a hand up into Lance’s neck and it was almost enough to send him rolling off.

There was movement behind them and Lance, over the chaos, heard the whir of the door sliding open. The gasp was Pidge’s, Lance was certain.

“Get Shiro!”

Lance couldn’t hear if she left or not, but he desperately, desperately hoped she was doing what he asked.

Fighting like this wasn’t like fighting as a paladin. This was sheer horror and desperation, this was a brawl that had at some point become bloody. And Lance didn’t want to hurt Keith, he didn’t want to, and that was the only reason Keith was even conscious enough to fight back.

The blade caught Lance in the face and he staggered off, crying out. Keith was on him in an instant, and then  _ not _ on him, pulled off by someone bigger and stronger than him. Shiro. It was Shiro.

Keith screamed and screamed.

Lance refused the healing pod and so it was Coran that patched him up.

Some of them were gathered in the medbay: Lance on the table with Coran beside him, sewing stitches into the gash up his arm; Pidge, who sat next to him, kicking her feet, her entire posture screaming restlessness and worry; Keith, face aglow where he was frozen in the pod.

Hunk had stepped out for something, at some point, and Lance could hear Shiro just outside of the doorway, engaged in a hushed conversation with Allura.

Fuck.

Coran finished what he was doing and Lance only flinched a little as the man set about the gash on his face. Lance hadn’t had a look at himself yet; he had no idea how bad it was.

“I should have said something,” Lance whispered. Pidge leaned against him, jostling him and causing Coran to give her a  _ look _ . A Coran look.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “None of us said anything.”

But had they all noticed the way Lance had noticed? He couldn’t be sure and he didn’t dare ask. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t have the energy to process it or the guilt or any of what had just happened.

Keith had tried to kill him. Keith had tried to—

Lance choked out a sob and Coran stopped what he was doing to drop a hand onto his shoulder. “You couldn’t have known,” he said quietly.

Lance only shook his head. “He was sick,” Lance whispered.

Someone pushed water into his hands and he looked up to see Hunk standing in front of him. “Try to take a deep breath,” he murmured to him. Hunk would know about that better than anyone. “And hydrate. Shiro and Allura are talking right now. We’re gonna figure this out, alright?”

Lance nodded.

 

“Abnormal brain activity,” was all Coran really could say, after all the possible scans were done. Shiro had a word for it. Lance knew because he had a word for it, too. Neither of them said it.

 

“Lance.”

There was no sense holding vigil in the medbay—they’d put Keith into cryo; he wouldn’t wake up until they woke him up—and so at some point they’d all moved to the common area. Shiro sat across from Lance on the sofas while Lance steadfastly avoided eye contact with everyone.

“Lance, I know its—” Shiro paused and Lance could hear the hesitation in it. “Lance, I need to know everything.”

Lance opened his mouth and he tried, he really tried, but he didn’t know where to begin. “He was hearing things,” he told them. They knew that, though. Lance had told him that much. “And, uhh—he kept telling me he was sick, but then he kept saying he  _ wasn’t _ sick and—” Lance swallowed and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. “I don’t know, there are so many little things. It’s so  _ obvious _ now. I can’t believe I didn’t—”

“Hey, no one’s blaming you, Lance.” Hunk dropped an arm round his shoulders and Lance leaned into it.

Lance nodded. “It started with the food, I guess,” he said. Every word he said tugged at the stitches on his face and brought about pain. He suddenly regretted refusing the healing pod. “I caught him throwing up—he said the food was making him sick, and I just thought—”

He sighed and lifted his head.

“And he didn’t make sense sometimes, he would say things and then say the opposite later.” Lance looked at Shiro. “He said I was the one making him sick, that I was—I was the one putting it in his head, that he was sick—”

“You two were together.” Lance swung his head around to look at Pidge.

“Maybe?” He shifted uncomfortably under the gazes directed his way. “Yeah? I guess.”

He’d never really put a thought to it too much. Keith came and went and they did what they did. It felt especially wrong now to put a label on it. Maybe that was where he’d gone wrong; maybe he shouldn’t have let Keith keep so much distance when something was so obviously wrong.

No one pressed him any more on the subject.

 

There was a solution.

“A cure?” Hunk asked, hesitantly.

Shiro gave him a sad look. The same sad look was followed up by Coran.

“Well, no,” Coran said. “This is not really—There is no cure. For this.”

The words rang loud. Lance shrunk further into the cushions of the sofa, hoping he could disappear. No one looked his way. No one blamed him but he blamed himself enough to account for all of them. 

“But there is a solution, yes.”

Allura was perched on the edge of the sofa, next to Shiro. As far as Shiro had explained it to them, these sort of things existed on Altea, too. Mental illness, psychosis—they weren’t exclusive to Earth and not unique only to humans. So they understood what was going on.

Pidge stood next to Coran, adjusting her glasses, fidgeting nervously. “We can reverse engineer it, I suppose you could say,” she explained. “Akin to medicine, on Earth.”

“We do have—” Coran stopped, glancing down at Allura. ‘We  _ did _ have medicine. On Altea.”

Pidge nodded. “The healing pods can generate something. Of course, Altean brains are different, so we need one of us to serve as a baseline.”

Lance snorted and all eyes swiveled to him. “Okay, so which of us?”

Hunk was anxious. Shiro was god knows all kinds of fucked up. Pidge was—Pidge would do fine. She gave Lance an annoyed look, mouth pressed into a thin line.

“I don’t suppose it matters too much,” Coran cut in.

“I’ll do it,” Pidge said with a sigh. She gestured idly. “We can scan  _ my  _ brain, use  _ it  _ as a baseline. From there, we can manufacture something for him.”

 

Lance avoided  _ everybody _ . He avoided their eyes, their attention, any attempt at conversation.

 

Pidge found him at the pod, sitting on the floor. He sat, legs open wide, leaned back and braced upright by the press of palms to the cool floor. She dropped down next to him, cross legged, and it was the first he had seen of her in almost a week.

“Don’t do this too,” she whispered and he looked her way. The lines of her face were creased dark with the eery light cast by the pod.

“I’m fine,” Lance told her. He looked up, into the soft glow, and Keith’s face looked out at them, frozen in sleep. “How much longer will he be in there?”

Pidge shrugged. “The treatment is being pumped into him now. It’s just a matter of making sure it’s thoroughly in his system.” Lance was certain Coran would have put it more eloquently. “And working,” she added softly.

Lance nodded, looking away from Keith and the haunt his face cast over him. His eyes followed the lines of the metal plating of the floor and he pressed the blunt edges of his nails into a seam.

“Is this right of us?” Pidge asked suddenly. Lance looked her way, startled. “To do this to him?”

Lance felt his chest tighten and he sucked in a breath. Pidge was looking at Keith and the lines of her face suddenly made sense, given the tone of her voice, the tremor of her hand where it was draped across her knee.

“Drugging him up like this, without his consent.”

Keith’s face looked down on them, gaunt and haunting and accusatory.

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with Keith developing schizophrenia. It involves anxiety, incoherence, confusion, sever delusions, etc.


End file.
